Target, The Happiest Place on Earth: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

A week ago my little family had to make a trip to Target (normally the happiest place on Earth). As we worked our way through the anxious crowd of people our band of small humans did what they do best; scream, grab things off of shelves, and ask when they were going to eat. It took much longer than normal and I could feel my own anxiety rising. I began to buy into the feeling that I should be purchasing more unnecessary gifts and my husband would promptly remind me about that thing called ‘a budget’ and that we didn’t 'need' a life-sized bear head in our bathroom and place each thing back on the shelf.

When we finally returned to the car and got everyone and everything buckled in we all took a deep breath in the silence. My calmer half looked at me and said,

“I am totally sure that this was not what Jesus intended when he was born.”

As people poured out of shops with carts brimming with things I couldn’t help but agree with him. Besides the fact that I am sure if Jesus was able to dictate where we bought gifts celebrating His birth he would want us to buy local, I am also fairly sure God wasn’t intending on this offshoot celebration of Jesus’ birth. Mass amounts of gifts and cookies and debt combined with the societal pressure to have the HAPPIEST and most JOYFUL season ever seems counter to the entire reason Jesus was born in the first place.

Jesus came because of our brokenness.

A brokenness that does not disappear when December rolls around and glowing trees go up and coffee shops switch from pumpkin to peppermint. For many adults, I would hasten to say for all of us, there is a sadness that comes with Christmas. It may be a tinge or it may be an all-consuming cavern but combine short days, dreary weather, darkness, the façade of a world with perfect functioning families juxtaposed on the reality of our own family or lack-there-of, and the reminder of loss that seems to be marked by the coming of a new year that will begin without those whom we have lost and there is some level of grief that accompanies Christmas for each of us.

The joy of Christmas must must must be in Jesus. There is no other balm to soothe the pains we walk through as people. There is nothing else that can fill us up, make us whole, and deliver us from our own brokenness besides Him. The gift of Christmas is owning our true emotions and knowing that despite all of it, despite all the crap that will happen to us throughout a year, Jesus will come again and deliver us with a love that is all-consuming and free for the taking.

You can’t buy that at Target.

Waiting for Christ: Mid-Week Reflection

THE REV. DAVID STODDART

So I am waiting for Christ as my car sits in stop-and-go traffic, painfully inching my way through the Corner. I am late, and I feel impatience rising up within me, confronted yet again with circumstances I cannot control. This busy time of year affords many such moments: juggling band and choir concerts; getting home and church ready for Christmas; dealing with sermons, pastoral visits, Facebook posts. It feels like my schedule controls me more than I control my schedule. And yet . . . the Gift is still there, waiting to be given. So sitting in traffic, rushing around, working assiduously—in all these things, I am waiting for Christ.

If the Incarnation means anything, it means that God has come among us in the concrete circumstances of human life. There is no situation too prosaic or too awful for Christ to enter. We could expend huge amounts of time and energy trying to create the perfect holiday setting for Christ to appear in or manufacture the right religious feelings to greet Christ with—and then miss the Jesus who has been coming to us all along. The fact is, if I cannot wait for Christ in line at the grocery store and be receptive to him then, I probably will not find him at Midnight Mass, either.

It is never too late to observe Advent, to practice waiting for Christ in the here and now, wherever we are, whatever we might be doing. I know that when I remember this and try to live it, however imperfectly, I realize the Presence more fully and experience a greater measure of peace and joy.

A favorite poem of mine has been surfacing in my consciousness recently. It gets at this theme of meeting God in the reality of our lives. It is written by Galway Kinnell and it’s entitled, “Prayer”:

Whatever happens. Whatever
"what is" is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

So be it. Amen.

Healthy: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” -1 Corinthians 12:4-6

Three weeks ago we had our annual Fall EYC Retreat. Each student was asked to pick a block on a very large canvas and fill it completely. It will hang in our new space as a touchstone of our community at this time. Unique, gifted, and beautiful. Each block is splendid and intricate but when put together as a whole--breathtaking.

Last weekend I led a workshop at our high school diocesan retreat on body image. We began by brainstorming all the ways we are told our body should be. A list emerged that looked something like this, Women: thin, curvy, tall, short, muscular, toned, soft, clear skin, no ‘oddities’, great hair that is both curly and straight on alternating days, a gap between your thighs… and, don’t wear clothes that are too revealing but don’t be too covered up. Men: ripped everywhere, not too muscular that it’s creepy, smell good all the time, don’t smell too much that it seems like you are trying, and have great hair. Also be very tall, except not over 6’5. And although it is not on the outside: everyone should be funny but not too funny it is annoying.

Please note: healthy was not once mentioned.

I’d love to think that we move past these expectations as adults but I am confident we do not. We have to work past them. It reaches far beyond our bodies into our careers, families, homes, and social lives. We create a standard in our minds that is a mishmash of media, expectations, other peoples’ lives, and our own desires to create a chupacabra of goals. The expectation we have for each facet of our existence can mirror what a teenager (and adult) is told their body must be: curvy, thin, tall, short, muscular, and smooth aka…impossible. We forget about the one thing we should hope to be: healthy.

Healthy in our lives looks like living into our gifts. When we are being true to ourselves and living our lives sharing the gifts that God has given us we are our best selves, not a manipulated version of a mythical self we have dreamed up. Living into our own gifts means that our lives do not mirror the lives of our siblings or our friends or our parents. Living into our God-given gifts means that we work to discover the few things that inspire us and bring Light to the world through us… then WE DO THEM. When we each begin owning our gifts; unique and beautiful, and stop comparing them to other’s gifts, but instead stand side by side shining light into the darkness together, we become something breathtaking.

Suspicion: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

One of my absolute most cherished moments in ministry happened last year. I have spoken about it a million times and I will a million more. One night we were talking about prayer and why it can be so difficult. Finding the right words, the lack of audible response from God, the way prayer is not always answered in the fashion we would like. Then, one brave hand was raised and a voice spoke up,

“What is most difficult for me is… what if I have been doing all this praying and there is nothing. What if I’m just talking to myself?“

Silence.

Then forty adolescent (and adult) heads began to nod and there was an audible ‘yes’ that echoed across the room.

Rachel Held Evans writes, “I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.”

I believe the same can be said for anyone who can easily accept the radical notion of God. When we think of the complexity of our lives, our bodies, our planet, the universe, and digest the concept of a creating God there are parts of my brain that physically hurt and can’t believe this whole God-thing and that this God also loves me. Then I remember the moment I gave birth to both my children. I kneel beside people I love, don’t know, and need to forgive while receiving Eucharist. I witness the Holy Spirit move through a community of teenagers as they empower each other to be true to their hearts in a harsh world. I experience Christ within me and through me and at me and I am willing to risk it all. It’s the one thing I am willing to be completely wrong about because there is something inside of me that can’t let go of the fact that I know I’m not just talking to myself.

That moment, when that brave teenager admitted that we could all be dead wrong… that was it for me, that was when I knew we were on the right track here, we had become a place to work out our questions about God. There were disciples who followed Jesus his entire ministry and were still not sure if they believed he was the Son of God. Faith is hard. It is even harder when we question alone. When one brave soul can speak up and say, “What if I’m talking to myself?” another can remind us of the moments they have witnessed grace and redemption in our lives. Moments they have seen God in and through and at us. The questioning makes us stronger. You are not alone (even when you feel like you are just talking to yourself).

The Living God: Mid-Week Reflection

REV. DAVID STODDART

A senior parishioner shared something quite poignant at a recent contemplative prayer gathering. She noticed that she and others her age often have a sense that something is missing, a hole that is not being filled. They try to fill that hole in many ways, she observed, but sitting with God in contemplative prayer is filling it for her—and filling it abundantly. Her observation echoes comments I have heard before from others, and it speaks to a crucial truth for all of us.

At some point, “extrinsic” religion, a religion focused on outward forms, just won’t be enough. Subscribing to a set of doctrines and going through the prescribed rituals will not satisfy our deepest needs and desires. People can go to church for decades, for their whole life, and then wake up and realize that saying certain words just because they have always said them or their parents always said them just won’t suffice. Just showing up on Sunday morning out of habit or cultural conditioning will not fill the hole. When that moment comes (and the sooner the better), we are primed to move from believing things about God to experiencing the reality of God.

And we can experience that reality because God lives in us and is calling us to wake up. This is the great good news of our faith: we are one with God in Christ, our human nature joined with nothing less than the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And we don’t make that happen: it has been done for us and given to us. Each and every moment of our lives we are glowing containers of divine life. At church or at the grocery store, in the office or in bed, we are filled with God’s Spirit, loved and cherished beyond measure.

Christian religion has one purpose: to awaken us to that truth so that we can live joyfully and generously. That’s why we come to church: to remember who we really are and embrace our God-given identity. Worship and prayer, ritual and sacrament, are wonderful gifs: they all point us to this end, but they are just that—a means to an end. To borrow an expression from the Buddhists, they are like a finger pointing at the moon. We want to see the moon in all its splendor—not get distracted by the finger pointing us to it. Frederick Denison Maurice, a 19th century Anglican priest and writer, looking around at the church of his day, once said “We have been dosing people with religion when what they want is not that but the living God.” I want people to come to church, but I really want them to come for the right reason: not to practice rote religion, but to discover the living God at work in the world and alive within them.